Wednesday, 12 September 2012

Outcry over Anti-Semitic cartoon by Austria's far right Freedom Party.

From Reuters:

Austria's president condemned far-right Freedom Party leader
Heinz-Christian Strache for posting a cartoon on his Facebook page that
was widely seen as anti-Semitic, the Austria Press Agency reported on
Sunday.
Heinz Fischer called it "the low point of political culture, which deserves to be universally and roundly condemned".

The
cartoon portrays a fat banker with a hooked nose and six-point star
buttons on his sleeve gorging himself at the expense of a thin man
representing "the people".

Strache denied being anti-Semitic
after the cartoon provoked an outcry and demands from the Jewish
community that Austria's political establishment condemn the act.
In
a speech at the opening of a festival in Linz, Fischer said Strache was
playing on the remnants of anti-Semitism in Austria, whose Jewish
population was decimated after the annexation of the country by Nazi
Germany in 1938.

"To that one can only say in the clearest terms: No way," Fischer said.